JzG: Wikipedia Review superfan Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

JzG delivers a tour d'horizon of all our latest threads, for the benefit of the ArbCom. Then Charles Matthews restates it.

[Somey]

Bah. There's a point where this sort of thing becomes prudish, or even silly. Nobody is going to show up here on WR looking for sexual gratification, or news on who the latest hot porn stars are... that's ridiculous. I'm perfectly happy with trying to account for AB's moral and/or behavioral sensibilities, some of which I even share, but not to the point where we're diluting the message or failing to show people the truth when it's right there in front of us.

The problem for me is that I'm no psychiatrist, and while I'm very sensitive to the kind of psychological damage that sites like Wikipedia can produce, it's irresponsible of me to make unofficial "diagnoses" of people like Guy Chapman. To some extent, such things may even be actionable. But at this point, it isn't enough to simply say he's a "jerk," and/or that he's an arrogant, dishonest, sexist hypocrite... Someone has to point out that this man is clearly depressed, and getting worse, almost by the day. The blame-shifting, the hyperbolic ranting, the refusal to recognize what's really happening around him, and yes, the porn - all of these things are symptoms of a much larger problem.

All the signs are there, and have been there all along, including the stuff he was posting to WikiEN-L about "wikistress" and "admin burnout" during the MONGO case earlier this year... He was almost certainly seeing that in himself, and it was clear he'd given the problem a lot of thought - because he knew it applied to him too. Starting his own private wiki was another clear sign - an attempt to wean himself off of the stressful aspects of WP without losing the power, and still keeping the day-to-day mechanics of editing and writing in place.

Getting totally away from Wikipedia is obviously the best thing for him, and the fact that he managed to get himself desysopped shows that he's not so far gone that he can't recognize it and act on it, at least. But it's a powerful addiction, and he's not going to break it if people continue to help him feed it. What's more, after a few weeks off he might now feel as though he's had his "break" and he can handle it again now. But it's WAY too soon, and anyone looking at the situation objectively should know that.

As usual, they're not doing their own people any favors.

[alienus]

I'm considerably less patient than you are with regard to AB's call for censorship, but the rest of your note does raise a valuable point: to what extent does WP appeal to the mentally ill more so than to the general public?

Al

[Yehudi]

to what extent does WP appeal to the mentally ill more so than to the general public?

Depends on the type of mental illness. I'd be amazed to find that it appeals more to people with severe bipolar disorder, but it undoubtedly attracts people on certain points of the autistic spectrum (if you call that a mental illness).

[Jonny Cache]

To what extent does WP appeal to the mentally ill more so than to the general public?

Depends on the type of mental illness. I'd be amazed to find that it appeals more to people with severe bipolar disorder, but it undoubtedly attracts people on certain points of the autistic spectrum (if you call that a mental illness).

We already have Frau Docktor T's learned scholium on this score, and I could hardly dispute so astute a diagnosis of the WikiPandemic, so allow me to speculate on the more Neurotic than Psychotic end of the spectrum.

In every confidence game under the sun or moonie light, it is the intense desire of the sucker for an impossible dream — the infantile delusion of the mark that his newfound confidant was sent to help him realize his innate destiny to achieve something grand without hardly trying — that his ship full of free lunches has finally come in — that keeps the Game going, that keeps the pigeon sending good goods after bad, long after the unbamboobled, er, unbamboozled bystander would have seen the con for what it is.

That is the core of the malady, whatever course it may take from there.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Mon 22nd October 2007, 9:06pm